He has been a cantopop lyricist since 1985, using the pen name Lin Xi. The Chinese characters for this name, 林夕, written vertically, look like the compound (simplified) character 梦 (pinyin: mèng), meaning "dream".

He has written over 2500 song lyrics. He is well known for composing lyrics very quickly. On TVB's show Be My Guest, he admitted that his fastest record for writing the complete lyrics to a song is 45 minutes.

He composed the lyrics to the song "Beijing Welcomes You", a six-minute song which was performed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics by a panoply of popular Chinese singers, and which proved extremely popular with the Chinese public.[3]

In May 2009 he published a book about his creative work in the previous decade, 曾经—林夕90前后 ('Once–Lin Xi's 1990s from beginning to end').[4]